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The month of September can be described as an autumnal whirlwind of birthday celebrations including mums, several girlfriends, god-children and my own.

My birthday weekend was a little more understated than the usual fanfare but I had so much fun and enjoyed the company of good friends. We exchanged gifts and reminisced for hours over memories that seemed insignificant but

I’ve done myself a disservice by not writing this sooner but in our hyper-modern, post-racial, ‘we don’t see colour just people‘ society I’ve become weary about sharing my experiences. But now the frustration from not telling this story supersedes my weariness, so please fix the base, adjust that treble and give me more volume on the mike. The melody of this blog will be all too familiar to some; sing along if you know it. For those who don’t like my sound, then please feel free to switch the frequency.

Blurred pictures fill my gallery. Every week I delete about fifty images and low and behold the following week here comes fifty more. There’s a frustrating nature about blurred pictures because they represent unfulfilled potential, uncertainty, the ‘what could’ve been if only…’

I was having a conversation with my girlfriend about whether or not I should address an incident that took place earlier on in the week. In her usual Aunty Maxine way she said “Shauna, ‘TIS THE SEASON OF CALL OUT. We have to pick our battles but we’re too old not to resolve reoccurring issues, call it out, resolve it and move forward.”

Well, after that dress down, I took her advice and in my most diplomatic yet ‘I’m tired of this foolishness’ manner, I addressed the issue. The relief I felt afterwards can’t be overstated; my girl was right – ‘tis the season of call out, no more blurred lines!

Some of us are better at tolerating blurred lines, but to a lesser or greater degree, ambiguity and unresolved issues in any situation causes anxiety. No matter how much we say we’re okay with the blurriness of that partner who won’t commit; or the ambiguity of our own non-commitment to a job, to our faith or simply to life – we’re not.

After the conversation with my girlfriend, I started to think about erasing uncertainty in my life in the same way as deleting blurred pictures from my gallery. I don’t tend to keep blurred images, so why tolerate ambiguous situations, right?

If only it was as simple as pressing the delete image button, but we all know it’s not. The reality may look more like this – the image didn’t turn out right and the blur is evident, but its not significant enough to be deleted. If you post it and add some sort of meaningful caption, you’ll get your usual likes/comments.

We potentially tolerate blurred lines for more or less the same reasons. We see ‘what could be if only…‘ in that partner who won’t commit. We add meaning to their non-commitment and don’t see the ambiguity of their actions as significant enough to disregard the relationship (I’m over-simplifying for the sake of word count but you catch the drift).

If you’re anything like me, ambiguity in most situations drives you mad. I mean, we can cope with not knowing how a film ends or not knowing what the weather will be like tomorrow; these things are neither here nor there. But for the things that really matter (career path, relationships, health) any whiff of a blur sends us loopy.

And again, if you’re anything like me, your default position will either be to avoidthe situation altogether(don’t get into that relationship or turn down the career offer because we’re not so sure about…) or allow the blurriness to go unresolved(if we pretend the ambiguity isn’t there hopefully it’ll go away).

Either position isn’t useful, as we could potentially miss out on something great and/or cause ourselves some serious anxiety.

So after the dress down from my sista-friend, I’m fully embracing the season of call out. And by ‘call out‘ I don’t mean anything involving a confrontation. This season is more about taking a look at ourselves and figuring out why we have certain default positions when it comes to blurred lines, and what we plan on doing about it.

It’s worth noting that some uncertainties in life may never be resolved. In these cases, our response should involve figuring out how to live with the uncertainty in a way that doesn’t negatively impact health, halt progress or detract from living a meaningfulexistence.

The season of call out requires us to switch into ‘big picture mode‘ as the process itself may be difficult. It will involve answering challenging questions – questions that may require looking into past experiences and fully unravelling how theses experiences currently impact our decision-making process. But by focusing on the payout, the process will be more than worth it.

I’ll leave you with this thought taken from Os Guinness’s book – God in the Dark (highly recommend if your blur relates to faith)

“Human beings are meaning-mongers. We are driven by a deep desire for meaning and belonging. We can live meaningfully only if we can make sense of our situation and through that find security in our world”.